A Travel Blog to Wonder , Ponder | by Sonia Mao

8 tips to REALLY sell more on Carousell Singapore – the best guide online

The best guide online with 8 actionable ways to boost sales on Carousell Singapore you won’t find in the FAQ: gain more followers and likes on Carousell, and get visibility on your listings without losing your sanity.

Updated 26/05/2016: Now with even more hacks!

Since I first published this post in November 2015, I’ve been getting a heck load of views! I’ve now updated from 5 to 8 tips and a quick guide to what all those short forms on Carousell mean.

Leave a comment if this article helped you out. Happy selling!

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“Don’t you mean Carouhell, Sonia?”

I can relate 100%. I’ve met plenty of dingdong buyers on this app, but for someone who isn’t trying to make a living off this it’s been great.

3. The most sellable item on Carousell = Anything/Everything

Whilst you probably think Carousell is chockfull of blogshop apparel, it’s actually not the case.

People increasingly now check Carousell out first before a regular retailer. You also have casual browsers who don’t know what they want until they see something they like.

Because Carousell is such a massive generic marketplace with categories like “For Her”, “Housing” “Baby & Kids” to name a few, it attracts all sorts of people looking for all sorts of products.

I’ve sold everything from hand creams to branded bags to a unicorn mask, between price ranges of $3 to $320.

Some of my current randomness includes:

Neopets, pusheen, paintings for ants and Baubax travel jackets.

So don’t be afraid to list whatever you have lying around at home. You don’t need to limit yourself to just apparel and accessories.

Appealing to a broad audience will help you reap followers and likes from all sorts of Carousell shoppers – and sales.

Just avoid anything unethical or unsanitary obviously, and Carousell does have some seller’s guidelines on what won’t be accepted on the platform as well.

From my personal experience, however, I’ve observed the following:

What sells best on Carousell:

Electronics – even expensive ones

Books

Makeup (provided you’re selling cheap or it’s branded)

Laptop stickers

What doesn’t sell on Carousell:

Shoes

Clothes (probably because there’s SO MUCH on Carousell)

Accessories

My book listing: totally sold out.

4. Have a call to action

If you have several listings, let people know!

If someone’s chanced upon one of your items, they’re probably not going to see anything else unless you explicitly tell them you’ve got a collection worth browsing further.

Being shameless will get you sales.

5. Combine items into one post

When you have several items that could be grouped together, combine them!

This has the following benefits:

Having more relevant tags in one description (even if one gets sold, you can leave the description there)

People potentially buying more than one item from the group

Making it easier to browse through your profile because it’s not like you have 900 listings.

My rule is:
Group to the point where you can still tell what each individual item is from the thumbnail preview on mobile.

It’s a zoo!

Part II: The big guns to really super power your sales

Here’s where I share the three most effective means of achieving my Carouselling goals.

You’re going to want to write this down.

6. The best way to boost sales on Carousell: Update regularly

The single most effective tactic I’ve discovered is regularly updating my sales listings.

During my most chiong, I was updating every weekend with around 5 new listings in one sitting, sometimes even twice or thrice a week.

After December 2015, however, I slowed down to nearly never posting.

The difference in sales was huge.

Here are my sale averages in months of regular postings vs no postings:

Regular postings: 25 sales / month

No postings: 5 sales / month

I put this down to 3 reasons:

Your followers get your updates in their browse views

Your new listing will show up on the homepage for random browsers

Newer listings appear higher when one uses the ‘recent’ filter

The best time to post a new listing on Carousell? Weekends.

I would get queries almost instantaneously or within 24 hours.

Timing doesn’t really seem to matter, although I find I get slightly more queries if I update between 6 to 10pm.

7. The best way to gain likes on Carousell: Be a ‘featured seller’ on a collection

One time I received almost 60 likes on a koala onesie and nearly 10 queries about it overnight.

I was like, “what just happened”. It was a $60 koala onsie that I had listed nearly 3 months ago.

Turns out, I had gotten featured in a Carousellcollection with a theme around “being comfy”.

My soft cotton onesie sure fit the bill, and it was sold in no time at all.

To date, I’ve been featured twice in these editorial collections, even back when I didn’t have many positive reviews or followers.

You definitely want to get yourself in there.

There doesn’t seem to be much of a pattern to become featured in a Carousell ‘editorial’ collection, but here’s what I would recommend.

3 tips to become a featured seller in a Carousell collection:

Use “tags” in your description – It pays to be comprehensive. If your item has the theme’s word mentioned, it helps.

Update regularly – unlikely items older than a few months get featured

Carousell sometimes prompts you to upload a particular category of items eg costumes for Halloween – do it!

To be in the elusive ‘recommended seller‘ editorial that is a permanent collection, the Carousell help page basically says… it’s a matter of chance.

To increase chances of being a “recommended seller” on Carousell you should, however, aim to:

Take pretty photos

Have good reviews

Update regularly

Abide by community guidelines

Have clear pricing (aka skip the $0 hack)

Unfortunately, I haven’t been in that feature and haven’t been able to crack any patterns yet either.

I’ve seen recommended sellers with 10 – 100s of positive feedback, 100s to 1000s of followers, so I can’t advise if there’s any ‘minimum’ metric to aim for. Looks like it’s a lottery.

Carry on carouselling and keep hoping. Good luck!

8. The best way to get followers on Carousell? Follow other people

Carousell is kind of similar to Instagram in this particular tactic.

If you follow A, A gets a warm, ego-boosting notification that he’s “gained a new follower!”.

If your profile photo and name looks intriguing enough, A might check you out – and boom, sale or new follower gained in turn.

It’s a bit like going around shouting about your shop to others in the marketplace.

Note that this is quite a time-consuming, manual labour sort of tip – but it’s certainly worked for me.

I normally invest around 30 minutes two to three times a week to like at least 200 ‘relevant’ profiles each time.

Relevant followers = likely to be buyers of my stuff.

5 tips to getting followers on Carousell with this hack:

Avoid following accounts that have more than 500 followers/following – they’re probably like you, trying to sell more rather than buy

You can expect to have a 0.5 (or less) return rate on your following – ie you’ll have to follow 2 or more to get 1 follower in turn.

I normally go into the featured collection and look at the items that have lots of likes – and follow those likers on items that seem similar to what I’m offering.

Expect lots of big retail accounts using this tactic (ie 20,000 followers/following kind of big) following you – don’t get excited about these sort of followers

If your following number starts to significantly surpass your follower number – start to unfollow as it looks spammy otherwise. I usually try to maintain a following number below 500 when it’s pruning time.

Want some help kickstarting your Carousell profile, or just don’t have the time to set it up?

I offer services in the initial set up of Carousell accounts – ie taking photos, uploading and writing descriptions. Perfect for anyone moving house and would like to try selling some things on Carousell first.

Get in touch with the form if you’d like to know more.

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Bonus: What do all those short forms on Carousell mean?

AAvail: Short for ‘Available’, or “still can buy anot”

BBN – Brand NewBNWT – Brand New with TagBNIB – Brand New in Bag
BNIP – Brand New in Packaging Most that start with ‘BN’ are variations on being new and unused.

FF4F – Follow for follow: Similar to L4L. I’ll follow you 4 a follow back so we can both look more popular.

LL4L – Like for Likes: Not a spin off of L4D, L4L means I’ll give your items a like if you give mine a like so we can both pretend our stuff’s more desirable. Probably a useless kind of trade.LF – Looking For: Somebody’s wishlist that they post in hopes someone may be selling their heart’s desire, oftentimes asked for at a lower than market rate.

NNego: short for negotiate, or “can make cheaper anot”NM – Normal Mail: just regular mailing out at the post office; risks of lost mail.

PPO – Pre-order: means it’s probably from Taobao. A pre-order indicates you have to pay upfront for something that is not currently instock – do so at your own risk!Preloved: another way of saying pre-owned, second-hand or simply, ‘used’. Check for condition if this is the case!

RRM – Registered Mail: mailing out at the post office with a registration code for tracking and additional security against lost mail. This service costs an additional $2.30 at the post office.

TTrades: I love trading on Carousell. Trades can be item for item, or item + cash according to values that traders agree upon. Some people hate it though so don’t go around and “trade?” everyone.

UU+I+: This is in reference to trades. Some people ‘increase’ the value of their items’ list prices in the trading scenario and will usually state so on their profile, description or in the message. U+I+ = If you +$x on your sale price when it’s a trade, I also +$x on my sale price.

WWTT – Want to TradeWTS – Want to SellWTB – Want to Buy ‘WT-something’ usually states a specific intent.

There’s no surefire way to become a super seller, but I hope this helps you close a little more deals in Carousell.